1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bacteriological examination system and an information system for use in medical institutions.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, storage of resources outside a testing room or adoption of a facility management service (“FMS”) has been promoted. For a testing room within a hospital, there is an urge demand for reducing testing costs and improving the status of staff members. As for a bacteria testing room, staff members are demanded not only to reduce the testing costs but also to prevent a drug-fast bacterial species, that has become an object of public concern these days, from generating.
It is a technician's job to identify a bacterial species having infected a patient via a sample of the patient. The technician then reports the test result together with the name of the bacterial species, an antibacterial agent (drug) which is destructive to the identified bacterial species, and the drug sensitivity of the bacterial species to the drug. The drug sensitivity is the minimum concentration of the drug with which the growth of the bacterial species is inhibited and it is used to express the efficacy of the drug.
A bacteriological examination system is a system for testing the drug sensitivities of a bacterial species. In the bacteriological examination system, a panel having a plurality of wells juxtaposed in rows and columns is used to perform a drug sensitivity test on one bacterial species with respect to a plurality of drugs. The same drug is poured into one row of wells in the panel with various densities. A bacterial species can be tested for the drug sensitivities to a plurality of drugs at one time. The technician selects a panel to be used for a drug sensitivity test from different kinds of panels.
For example, the bacteriological examination system described in the Japanese patent publication 04-346779 uses a plate that corresponds to one row of the foregoing panel. Different drugs are combined to test a bacterial species for the respective drug sensitivities, and the results of the test are provided.
Drug-fast bacteria are bacteria whose drug sensitivities to a specific drug are equal to or lower (i.e., their minimum drug concentrations are higher) than a certain value. It is known that MRSA is fast to mesitylene and VRE is fast to vancomycin.
One of the factors that generates the drug-fast bacteria is that a physician administers the same drug repeatedly because the efficacy of the drug against bacteria is therapeutically high. Consequently, the sensitivity of the bacteria to the drug is gradually lowered. Eventually, the bacteria becomes fast to the drug. Physicians must therefore administer another drug while taking account of the fastness of a bacterial species to the drug.
In the aforesaid two bacteriological examination systems of the related arts, a technician must select drugs for performing a drug sensitivity test with respect to a bacterial species, and report the drug sensitivities of the bacterial species. For this reason, the technician may test the drug sensitivity of a bacterial species to a drug that is not actually used by a physician on a patient or the drug sensitivities of bacteria not residing in the hospital of interest. Moreover, in the two systems, the densities of drugs are fixed. A drug density which is so high as to seriously affect or poison a patient and a drug density which is so low that a bacterial species is apparently fast to the drug of the density thus insensitive to the drug. Thus, unused drugs or drugs with densities are too high or low are tested and wasted.
Moreover, when a physician administers a drug for a patient, the physician wants to review the drug sensitivities of bacteria residing in a hospital so as to suppress further generation of drug-fact bacteria. However, a bacteria testing technician does not provide information that may be used as a distinctive index of fastness of a bacterial species to a drug for the physician to review the fastness to the drug.